Summer fun for cellist: 3-concerto program

Usually when you attend an orchestral program featuring the cello, you hear one concerto.

This time, you get to hear three.

Joshua Roman, the Seattle Symphony's principal cellist and one of the most admired young performers in the Northwest, will play three great (and very different) cello concertos in two concerts this weekend with the Northwest Sinfonietta. It's very likely the first such concert in our region; certainly it's the first featuring a major player like Roman.

The 23-year-old, who drew turn-away crowds to his Town Hall recital here last March, returns to that venue with conductor Christophe Chagnard to play Haydn's D Major Cello Concerto, Schumann's Cello Concerto in A Minor and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat. Start times are 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday (888-356-6040 or www.brownpapertickets.com); there also will be a third concert Sept. 8 in Tacoma's Rialto Theatre at 8 p.m.

Tickets to the Town Hall events are $25; you also can order a patron ticket ($100) that includes front-row reserved seats and a post-concert party with the musicians.

That party is likely to be a hoot; the ebullient Roman is highly entertaining company, and he's known for thinking outside the box. The idea of the three-concerto concert, for example, arose when "I was looking for a fun thing to do this summer," as Roman explains.

"Originally I was thinking of making a foray into conducting. Then I started thinking about how much I love playing concertos. Why not play three of them? I talked to Christophe [Chagnard], and he was game."

Originally, Roman planned to play the Elgar Concerto, a romantic British work long associated with the late cellist Jacqueline de Pre, instead of the Haydn.

"I'd love to do the Elgar," he says, "but it didn't really fit with the whole program. With three concertos, you have to think the way a band thinks about a whole album. These three fit together better. The Schumann is very romantic; the Shostakovich is more 20th-century and more of a contrast, and the Haydn is just beautiful architecture."

Another favorite concerto, the Dvorák, will come up later on Oct. 22 at the Cascade Symphony Orchestra (Edmonds), when Roman performs under the baton of his fellow Seattle Symphony musician Michael Miropolsky (www.cascadesymphony.org).

Isn't Roman daunted a bit by the challenge of playing three big pieces where most cellists would play only one?

"I think it's going to be a lot of fun. It'll be a blast," says Roman, who doesn't sound daunted at all. "Back in the early-20th century it was quite common for artists like [Jascha] Heifetz and [Pablo] Casals to play more than one concerto on a program."

Roman is still on a high from his recent appearances in Japan, where he played concerts in Tokyo and Osaka that he said "brought me to a new level" of playing. He performed his own arrangements of some Japanese popular pieces, plus a diverse selection of pieces by Ysaye and Dvorák, some Piazzolla tangos and other works.

"The audiences in Japan are a little unnerving," says Roman, who studied Japanese and speaks "enough to get the gist" of conversations.

"They're very polite, and they aren't crazy; the intensity is very controlled. They just keep clapping and clapping. I played two encores each night and greeted everyone as they left — people of all ages, including a lot of kids my own age. It was an amazing experience."

First week

Seattle Chamber Music Society's Summer Festival at the Lakeside School winds up the first of four weeks tonight, with violinist Scott St. John featured in the 7 p.m. free preconcert recital. The main program, at 8 p.m., has cellist Ron Thomas in Beethoven's "Magic Flute" Variations (with pianist Anna Polonsky) among the other offerings of Bruch, Ravel and Josef Suk.

On Monday at 7 p.m., it's Polonsky's turn for the preconcert recital; the 8 p.m. concert features a Schubert trio, Janacek quartet and Frank Bridge Quintet, with such artists as James Ehnes, Robert deMaine and Alon Goldstein joining in. Programming continues Wednesday (Jeremy Denk plays the 7 p.m. recital, with a Hindemith viola sonata, a Glazunov quintet and a Dvorák piano trio in the 8 p.m. concert).

And Thursday brings the annual Monika Clowes Emerging Artist Concert at 7 p.m., with six top teenage violinists: Benji Bae, Grace Choi, Mikaela Holland, Leah Nelson, Marié Rossano and Rachel Wong.

Tickets: $16-$42, or $10-$15 for the Emerging Artist program (206-283-8808 or visit www.seattlechambermusic.org).

Don't forget

Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival, located up in the Cascade foothills near Leavenworth and directed by Lisa Bergman, opens this weekend with a 7:30 p.m. Saturday program featuring Brazilian jazz (by the Jovino Santos Neto Quintet) and a 3 p.m. Sunday concert of classical selections (including music of Bach, Prokofiev, Dutilleux and Smetana). Sunday's artists include pianists Christina Dahl and Oksana Ezhokina, violinist Laurent Weibel, guitarist David Russell and the Icicle Creek Piano Trio. Tickets cost $10-$20 (find tickets, information and directions at 877-265-6026 or www.icicle.org).

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com